"Keep your wand out. Nevermind the Statute of Secrecy now, there's going to be hell to pay anyway, we might as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg. […] What's that at the end of the street? Oh, it's just Mr. Prentice… don't put your wand away, boy, don't I keep telling you I'm no use?"

Behind the scenes

When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released, many thought Mr. Prentice was, perhaps, another member of the Order who, like Mrs. Figg was assigned to watch over Harry during the summer, given her lack of preoccupation of him spotting Harry's wand. J. K. Rowling, however, dispelled these rumours on her J. K. Rowling's Official Site by saying "Mark Evans is... nobody. He's nobody in the sense that Mr. Prentice, Madam Marsh and Gordon-Dudley's-gang-member are nobodies, just background people who need names, but who have no role other than the walk-on parts assigned to them". It is, thus, more than likely that the risk of Mr Prentice noticing the wand was outweighed by the risk of encountering Dementors without a wand at the ready by Mrs. Figg.